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Comparative Study
. 1993 Jul;60(1):203-17.
doi: 10.1901/jeab.1993.60-203.

Scaling pigeons' choice of feeds: bigger is better

P R Killeen  1 , H Cate, T Tran
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Scaling pigeons' choice of feeds: bigger is better

P R Killeen et al. J Exp Anal Behav. 1993 Jul.

Abstract

Preferences of hungry pigeons among 10 grains and pellets were analyzed using a Thurstone scaling procedure. The recovered scales were positively correlated with size of the feed. The correlations improved when the Thurstonian assumption of equal-sized discriminal dispersions (Case V) was replaced with the assumption of proportional-sized dispersions (Case VI), as entailed by Weber's law. The correlations weakened when the experiments were conducted with the pigeons close to their free-feeding weights, where the probability of sampling alternative grains increased. In the final experiment, exposure to a large pellet shifted the preferences between two smaller pellets.

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